National Theatre Live: Dick Whittington – A Pantomime for 2020

First staged at Lyric Hammersmith in 2018 and freshly updated for 2020, Ned Bennett directs this wild and inventive production and explores what it is like to come from a small town and arrive in a big city today. With a host of colourful characters, irreverent jokes, talking animals and popular songs this is Dick Whittington as never seen before.

National Theatre Live: The Habit of Art

National Theatre Live’s 2010 broadcast of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed play The Habit of Art, with Richard Griffiths, Alex Jennings and Frances de la Tour, returns to cinemas as part of the National Theatre's 50th anniversary celebrations. Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station. Alan Bennett’s play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion’s spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.

Som ni vill ha det

A production of Shakespeare's "As You Like It" filmed for television. After the overthrowing of the old duke by his tyrannical brother, the duke's daughter Rosalind disguises herself as a man and sets out to find her banished father while also counselling her clumsy suitor Orlando in the art of wooing.

National Theatre Live: Trouble in Mind

In 1950s America, protests for racial equality erupt in the face of voter suppression. On Broadway, Wiletta Mayer, a talented black actress, begins rehearsals for a new play about racism – written and directed by two white men. When Wiletta finds that her arguments to tell the truth of the story are dismissed, she decides to take action. First staged over 60 years ago, Trouble in Mind is widely considered the masterpiece of actress and playwright Alice Childress - a wry and radical satire of racism in theatre.

Berlin Berlin

Private Lives

Elyot Chase and Amanda Prynne are glamorous, rich, reckless…and divorced. Five years later, their love for one another is unexpectedly rekindled when they take adjoining suites of a French hotel while honeymooning with their new spouses. This chance encounter instantly reignites their passion, and they fling themselves headlong into a whirlwind of love and lust once more, without a thought for partners present or turbulences past. This Chichester Festival Theatre production of Noël Coward’s Privates Lives was filmed live at London's Gielgud Theatre.

National Theatre Archive: I Want My Hat Back

Bear's hat is gone. He loves his hat. He wants it back. He asks all the animals in the forest, but no one has seen it. WAIT. He has seen it somewhere.

National Theatre Archive: Mosquitoes

In 2008, as the Large Hadron Collider searches for the Higgs boson, tragedy throws two sisters together. The collision threatens them all with chaos. Olivia Colman and Olivia Williams play the sisters in this drama from writer Lucy Kirkwood.

True West

A screenwriter gets conned out of selling a script to a Hollywood producer by his brother, who pitches his own idea for a movie. This video recording of the 1982 Steppenwolf Theatre Company production was later broadcast by PBS.

Romance/Romance

This delightful pairing of one-act musicals, one classic and one modern, takes a comical and moving look at the mysteries of love. Act I, based on Schnitzler's The Little Comedy, is a delightful romp through the sexual ennui of turn-of-the-century Vienna, as two wealthy but bored socialites masquerade as impoverished bohemians seeking romance. Act II, based on the Jules Renard play Summer Share, explores modern affection and disaffection as two married couples share a summer house in the Hamptons. An Off-Off-Broadway sensation that successfully moved to Broadway, Romance/Romance is a charming and tuneful small-cast gem, here filmed live for television.

National Theatre Live: The Wife of Willesden

A proper local legend. Married five times. Mother. Lover. Aunt. Friend. Alvita will tell her life story to anyone in the pub – there’s no shame in her game. The question is: are you ready to hear it? Because this woman’s got the gift of the gab: she can rewrite mistakes into triumphs, turn pain into parables, and her love life’s an epic poem. They call her The Wife of Willesden... A play that celebrates the human knack for telling elaborate tales, especially about our own lives. Zadie Smith transports Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath to 21st Century North West London, directed by Kiln Theatre Artistic Director Indhu Rubasingh. A production from Kiln Theatre

National Theatre Live: The Comedy of Errors

Separated at birth, two sets of twins collide in the same city for one crazy day, as multiple mistaken identities lead to confusion on a grand scale.

Tricicle: Manicomic

Tricicle brings together in a single theatrical show their best gags, created during their first three years of life.

National Theatre Live: Collaborators

John Hodge's Collaborators centers on an imaginary encounter between Joseph Stalin and the playwright Mikhail Bulgakov.

National Theatre Live: The Kitchen

The Kitchen, Arnold Wesker’s "extraordinary black comedy," is directed by Bijan Sheibani and features an ensemble cast of 29 actors. The production is set in a restaurant in 1950s London.

National Theatre Live: A Disappearing Number

The innovative interweaving of romance and math was conceived. The 2008 Olivier Award winner for Best New Play, it has toured the world and was recently performed in New York as part of the Lincoln Center Festival.

National Theatre Live: London Assurance

Grace has agreed to marry Sir Harcourt in return for his financial support of her family. At a house party in her father's place, Harcourt's son Charles also falls in love with Grace. When his father appears on the scene, he has to convince him that there is a case of mistaken identity and he is somebody else. Then Lady Gay Spanker, a married woman also visiting at the house, is persuaded by Charles to seduce his father and thus divert his attention from Grace. Much confusion and scheming ensues.

National Theatre Live: Twelfth Night

A ship is wrecked on the rocks. Viola is washed ashore but her twin brother Sebastian is lost. Determined to survive on her own, she steps out to explore a new land. So begins a whirlwind of mistaken identity and unrequited love. The nearby households of Olivia and Orsino are overrun with passion. Even Olivia's upright housekeeper Malvolia is swept up in the madness. Where music is the food of love, and nobody is quite what they seem, anything proves possible.

National Theatre Live: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

Against the backdrop of Hamlet, two hapless minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, take centre stage. As the young double act stumble their way in and out of the action of Shakespeare’s iconic drama, they become increasingly out of their depth as their version of the story unfolds.

Groucho och jag

Groucho Marx tribute show by Jan Sigurd.